Braving Chemo by Beverly A. Zavaleta MD

Author:Beverly A. Zavaleta MD
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sugar Plum Press, LLC
Published: 2019-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

Helpful Hint

If you don’t have the time or energy for washing, disinfecting and cooking fresh vegetables and fruits, remember that you can buy them canned, frozen or packaged.

Slay Your Sweet Tooth: Reducing Sugar

We all like comfort food. Near the end of chemo, I recall bingeing on some vegan chocolate-chip cookies that a friend made for me. And I did it while binge-watching an old TV show—that’s how far gone my brain was!

However, while chocolate and good television are great for the soul, a high-cookie, high-sugar diet is not great for the chemo patient. There is evidence that eating excess sugar and processed starches can increase inflammation and insulin levels, both of which can lead to harmful effects such as weight gain, diabetes, chronic pain and cardiovascular disease. I made a great effort to cut my sugar intake as much as possible at the start of chemo, and despite my hereditary sweet-tooth, I still try to maintain a low-sugar diet.

If you want to begin reducing the sugar in your diet, start by taking an inventory of what you eat over a few days. Do you eat dessert frequently? If so, perhaps you can cut down by half. Do you sweeten your coffee? Try leaving out the sugar. It takes about a week for your palate to get used to unsweetened coffee.

Speaking of coffee, drinks are a common source of sugar that is easily eliminated. Instead of sugar-sweetened drinks such as soda, sports drinks and sweet tea, try drinking water or unsweetened tea. Even natural fruit juice contains lots of sugar! Yes, it’s natural sugar but it’s still sugar. You get greater benefits from eating the whole fruit, such as fiber and live enzymes, and drinking a glass of water, than from drinking fruit juice.

The next step for sugar reduction is to find hidden sources of sugar. For most of us, a large source of hidden sugar is the added sugars found in processed foods. Added sugars are sugars that do not occur naturally in a food but are added to the food when processed. To discover this sugar source, you will have to read food labels. Added sugars include ingredients such as sucrose, maltose, high-fructose corn syrup, rice syrup and honey.

In an ideal world, we would never eat packaged or processed foods and all our food would be home cooked. Of course, in an ideal world none of us would be having chemotherapy either! In real life we eat processed or packaged foods for convenience, such as commercially prepared breads or cereals, energy bars and frozen dinners. These items are frequently necessary, but even so, it is possible to find healthy options. When you buy prepared foods, check the labels and choose foods low in added sugars. Look for products labeled as whole grain as well. You will notice that whole grain foods (e.g., corn tortillas) usually have less sugar than “white” or processed grain foods (e.g., flour tortillas). Once you make the habit of checking the labels for sugar content

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